


parallel lines who meet (side by side by side)

by demiromcom (mayerwien)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Gen, M/M, Multi, WIP Amnesty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:29:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27190424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/pseuds/demiromcom
Summary: “Earth to Staaaaan,” Richie calls. “You really gonna deprive me of airline peanuts and the ever-fun carnival experience of trying to aim into the toilet while the plane bounces up and down? Was I such a bad friend to you?”And for a moment, the darkness thins out a little, the fog inside his head clearing. Enough for Stan to push himself to his feet, inch by inch, one fist against the bathroom door—and hold back a small smile as he says, “Okay. Okay, asshole. I’ll be there.”“That’s more like it, dipshit,” Richie says, and he sounds like he’s grinning, too.---IT Chapter 2 fix-it. THIS WORK IS INCOMPLETE.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom & Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough & Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Kudos: 3
Collections: Good Intentions: Abandoned and Unfinished WIPs





	parallel lines who meet (side by side by side)

**Author's Note:**

> So basically I need to be free of this, or at least the version it currently exists in. I plan on trying to write out all the ideas I had for this fic in just a long rambly Tumblr-style post so at least they're out there, but for now I am unburdening my Dropbox folder and breathing.

_when I am in your presence I feel life is strong_

_and will defeat all its enemies and all of mine_

_and all of yours in you and mine in me_

\- Frank O’Hara

_and that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?_

_that’s what it’s really about_

\- Stephen Sondheim

\--

The phone rings, and—

\--

For Stan, the memories come rushing back at once—a tidal wave of color and sound. Derry, where he grew up; the town he left behind. The clacking of bicycle wheels on a dusty street. Overlapping voices calling his name, _hurry up, Stan, Staniel, keep up,_ laughing. Then, blurrier—a house full of shadows; water running down tunnels, a dark chamber deep under the ground. Bodies, hundreds of them, floating.

When Stan comes back to himself and looks down at his hands, he realizes they’re clenched into fists. He opens them and sees the deep, even imprints his nails scored into his palms, like running stitches made with a needle.

It’s as though someone had stolen slides from a projector in his head, his entire childhood fuzzy and missing—and then he’d heard Mike’s voice on the phone, _Mike Hanlon,_ and the slides had been slotted back into place, their images thrown up clear on the wall. Mike. Bill. Richie. Eddie. The new kids, Beverly and Ben. His friends.

But what comes back strongest is the fear. He feels it now, the black, oily terror uncoiling in his gut, throat tightening and heart hammering out of his chest. Poison in his bloodstream; cracks in his bones.

This fear isn’t just a memory. Stan realizes it was always with him; just sleeping until now. And now that it’s been awakened again, he knows the truth. It will never leave him. Never.

“Honey?” It’s Patty, looking up from her laptop at the kitchen table. “Who was on the phone?”

“I...” Stan blinks down at the carpet. He’d dropped his phone after the call ended; he doesn’t remember doing it. Stan stares at his phone on the floor, and stares at his phone on the floor.

“Stan?” Patty kneels next to him, her hand a soothing, small weight on his back. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t,” Stan chokes. “I can’t—do it again—“

Because it’ll be him. When they face It again, his fear will drag them all down with him. It’ll be his fault. He can’t go back and get his friends killed. And he can’t run from It for the rest of his life, have It rotting away his insides until there’s nothing left—

“Do what?” Patty asks, her brow furrowed; not understanding, not _knowing._ “What do you—“

And then Stan’s phone rings again.

\--

For Richie, after he’s hurled the entire contents of his stomach onto the concrete and frozen under the spotlights, and zigzag-stumbled backstage again and into his dressing room, swatting away his manager who is demanding _Rich look at me, Rich what the fuck, are you hungover again, are you going back out there or not I need to know—_ he slams the door and locks it, and tries to drown himself in a bottle of water that’s expensive as shit, and then he figures he should probably just drink it. So he does, crushing the plastic in his hand, sucking deep breaths in, out, in, out—and.

It’s jagged bits and pieces inside his brain, all coming at him like shards of glass from an explosion. The rest is gaping holes, things he knows he _should_ remember but doesn’t; he’s panicking and he doesn’t even know why. But Richie needs to talk to someone else about it, someone who gets it, because if he doesn’t his head will fucking burst.

 _Eddie,_ is the first thing he thinks. Eddie Kaspbrak, holy _shit._ The kid with the asthma and the high rat-a-tat voice and the wide eyes. With shaking hands, Richie yanks his phone out and Googles him, but apparently there are like five hundred Edward Kaspbraks in America, which doesn’t make sense because it’s a weird-ass name, how the hell are there so many people with the same fucking weird-ass name—and also they’re all only on _LinkedIn_ which is a total bitch to navigate and none of them have phone numbers listed anyway, which makes Richie groan.

And then Richie remembers Stan.

The search results bring up an accounting firm in Atlanta. There’s a photo of a man with a gentle smile that Richie only just recalls, and a mobile number. “Come on,” Richie mutters, drumming his fingers on his knee.

“Hello?” a voice on the line asks tentatively.

“Stan?” Richie collapses into a chair, passes his hand over his eyes. “Stan the man. Hey, I don’t—uh, dunno if you remember, I’m Richie Tozier, from Derry—“ _Derry—_ “we knew each other in like, middle school, and I just got a call from, holy shit, I’m going to sound absolutely insane if you don’t remember—“

There’s a sharp inhale. “From Mike. Yes. I...I remember.”

“Okay.” Richie blows his breath out. “To be honest, I was kinda expecting you were gonna say you had no idea what I was talking about and to go fuck myself, and then maybe someone was gonna knock on my door and I’d open it and it’d be _White Collar-_ era Matt Bomer with a check for me for a million dollars and then I’d know this was all a dream, but, uh. Not a dream, huh?”

 _Beep beep, Richie,_ the voices in the back of his mind say, _Richie, shut up._

But something more stubborn, deep in his gut, is telling him to keep talking and not stop. And that, at least, has never been hard. So Richie talks.

\--

After answering Richie’s call, Stan had excused himself and gone up to the bathroom, needing to be somewhere small and alone for a while. The tile is cold on his legs as he slides to the floor, leaning back against the door with his phone pressed to his ear. “—weird as fuck, I thought once you got old enough you just forgot everything about being a kid,” Richie is saying. “But now it’s like—“ He makes an explosion sound with his mouth.

Stan had forgotten how much Richie could talk. It’s comforting, in a way; his heart twists in his chest with the familiarity of it. “Yeah, it’s...starting to come back to me too,” he says, cautiously. “Did—did Mike tell you? Why we have to go back?”

“No, but...” Richie hesitates, and Stan can so clearly picture thirteen-year-old Richie scrunching his nose, pushing his smudged glasses back up. “I just know we have to. It’s, it’s like this pull? Kinda like vertigo. Huh, maybe that’s why I threw up.”

 _He doesn’t know,_ Stan thinks, closing his eyes. _He doesn’t remember—It._ His head thunks back against the door. He’s never felt so alone. “I can’t,” he whispers hoarsely.

“Hey, what? No. No no no. What is it, work? C’mon, you can take a few days to fuck off to Maine with us, you’re a hotshot accountant now so you can afford it. And—” Richie groans. “Ugh. This is the cheesiest thing I’ve ever said, but—I just know it’s important that all of us have to go back. It’s giving me a fucking migraine, this thing, over and over, _we all need to be together.”_

Then Richie pauses, a rare thing, before continuing, “Look, I don’t remember everything about when we were kids, like my brain’s not doing so hot, but—I remember you’re my oldest friend, and all I know is I gotta see you. And probably sock you on the arm when I do and be like, _Staniel, look at you, you finally grew into your nose,_ and you’ll punch me back with your little weenie hand, and it’ll be so great, come on.”

Stan laughs, a little hollowly. “Real compelling argument you’ve got there, Rich. Good speech.”

“It was, wasn’t it? You owe me at least five bucks for that one. Clubs have paid me more for less.” Richie chuckles. “But seriously, man. If you don’t go, then—I don’t go.”

“What? That’s—“ Stan swallows. “You can’t do that.”

“Sure I can. Hear that?” There’s a slight rustle, then silence, and Stan presumes Richie is holding his phone out to an empty room. “That’s the sound of me not booking my flight to Maine. So what’ll it be?”

Stan thinks back to when they were nine, ten, eleven; scenes from a life he’d forgotten he lived. Riding their bikes to the candy store together, fighting over the controls of Dragon’s Lair and Galaga, daring each other to try to rent R-rated movies for their sleepovers. The fall that Stan got the chicken pox, Richie came over every single day, not just to drop off his homework, but to sit for a while with his sock feet propped on Stan’s bed and tell him about the kid who’d pissed his pants during gym, or how the new assistant principal had a huge mole on his face shaped like a dong.

Back then, in spite of everything, Stan had been fine because he’d had Richie; loud, annoying, lovable, stupidly brave Richie. Stan pictures his friends walking into the house on Neibolt without Richie now. His palm stings.

_We made a promise. Remember?_

“Earth to Staaaaan,” Richie calls. “You really gonna deprive me of airline peanuts and the ever-fun carnival experience of trying to aim into the toilet while the plane bounces up and down? Was I such a bad friend to you?”

And for a moment, the darkness thins out a little, the fog inside his head clearing. Enough for Stan to push himself to his feet, inch by inch, one fist against the door—and hold back a small smile as he says, “Okay. Okay, asshole. I’ll be there.”

“That’s more like it, dipshit,” Richie says, and he sounds like he’s grinning, too.

Stan goes downstairs and tells Patty that his old friend Mike had called, to say he wasn’t doing too well—so their friends had all agreed to fly back to their hometown and stay with him until things settled. Patty understands, but she’s also surprised. Once, long ago, she’d remarked that Stan never really talked about his life before college, and he must have gotten some kind of look on his face, because she’d never asked again or tried to pry after that.

“Was it his dad?” Patty asks softly, when they’re in the middle of putting the dishes away.

Stan stops drying a wineglass. “What?”

“I—when your friend called, you said _I can’t do it again._ I thought maybe it was because your friend’s dad had passed away, since...” Patty shakes her head. “Never mind, I’m sorry.”

Stan can guess what the rest of her sentence would have been. _Since you took it so hard when your dad died._ The week they sat shiva is still a blur of anger and grief and utter silence in his mind; until now, he doesn’t know if he’d done it right, if he was supposed to have felt some kind of closure instead of the numbness he ended up with, that he’s still carrying around somewhere inside him.

“Hey.” Patty reaches up to cradle Stan’s face with one hand. “I’m glad you’re going. Your friend’s lucky to have you.” Then she pats her stomach with the other hand and jokes, “Just give a girl some warning if you’re not coming home for a while. You don’t wanna miss the bun popping out of the old oven.”

Stan makes a face. “Please stop calling our child _the bun,”_ he says. Then he leans in carefully and kisses Patty’s temple. “I won’t be long. I’ll call you every day until I get back,” he promises, and then slides his arms gently around her waist to hold her, just because.

\--

One by one, they get the call. Eddie crashes his car. Beverly kicks her husband in the teeth and runs, and doesn’t look back. The lucky seven, coming home.

( _All roads lead back to Derry,_ one of them jokes, later.

And someone else says, _Jesus, I sure hope not.)_

\--

Mike had considered gathering all of them at the inn and telling them everything straight out. But he’d reasoned that it wouldn’t be fair to shock them so suddenly—and admittedly, perhaps it’s tangled up with his own selfishness, his wanting to have just one normal night with his old friends. So he makes the dinner reservation at the Jade, and waits.

And they all show up, every single one. Bill is first, the uncertainty in his expression giving way to recognition and warmth as he pulls Mike into a hug. Ben is next, broad-shouldered and smiling, and then Beverly comes running in and scoops Bill into a huge hug that lifts his feet clear off the floor. Richie and Stan link arms and do their old fake-British-accent routine like they used to, _I say, I say, bloody good to see you, old chap, hear hear,_ and of course Richie can’t resist taking the cheapest of _your mom_ shots at Eddie, who glares daggers at him while the others crack up. Trading shots and baskets of dimsum over the lazy Susan, the seven of them fall into an easy rhythm of conversation and friendly insults and laughter. It’s the happiest Mike has been in a long, long time.

Then Mike, reaching for the soy sauce, happens to catch Stan’s gaze across the table, and something about the look on Stan’s face makes it clear that he already knows. Stan takes a shaky breath, and gives a small nod. So Mike gently starts to ease them into remembering, and then Beverly utters the name _Pennywise,_ a key turning in the attic door in their memories—and they know. What they started, and what they’re here to finish.

In hindsight, they should have expected the message in the fortune cookies ( _WELCOME HOME LOSERS SEE YOU REAL SOON),_ and the chaos that follows. After they get the check and apologize, they stumble back to the inn in a daze, and then Eddie says fuck if they’re still staying in a motel that looks _this_ haunted after what just happened.

So they all take their stuff and pile into Mike’s truck, and he drives them back to the farm, where they all huddle miserably in the living room. “S-S-So what do we do?” Bill asks, after Ben’s made them all mugs of tea and honey.

“I don’t know, exactly.” Mike is sitting in his grandfather’s old armchair, elbows on his knees, folding and unfolding his hands. “For years I tried researching, and I went looking for anyone who would talk to me about what happened—but no one would, or they just didn’t remember. All my leads went cold.” He shakes his head. “So I just had a feeling that...it would all make more sense, once we all got back together.”

“You _had a feeling?”_ Eddie repeats, his voice strained with panic. “Jesus, Mike, you call us back here to fight that, that, that thing—and you don’t even have a fucking _plan?”_

“Yeah, what did you think we were gonna do, hold hands and Care Bears belly tattoo-beam it to death?” Richie adds.

“Hey, go easy on him, all right?” Ben says, frowning. “Besides, we didn’t have a plan back then, and we still defeated It.”

Richie leaps off the sofa, jostling Eddie violently, and throws his hands in the air as he begins to pace. “Okay, Haystack, why don’t you go make your It’s Always Sunny conspiracy wall with newspaper clippings and scotch tape like you used to do, and see if that helps us any, huh? Maybe when the clown shows up you can poke him in the eye with a thumbtack. Give him tetanus with a rusty paperclip. That’ll really show him.”

“Beep beep, R-Richie,” Bill says, even through the stutter. “We’ll f-figure it out.”

Stan takes his glasses off and starts polishing them on his shirt front. “I mostly remember things that happened before,” he says quietly. “When we actually were in the sewers...that’s what’s not so clear. I remember going in, and I remember coming out, but—I don’t know _how_ we fought It, exactly.”

Mike nods. Back then, too, he’d tried writing it down as soon as he’d gotten home. But when he’d sat down at his desk he found that the details were already sliding away from him, more and more the faster he tried to write them down, like water running through his fingers.

“I remember breaking my arm,” Eddie stammers in a small voice. “And, and I remember teeth, rows and rows of teeth and...” He shudders. “Feeling more afraid than I’ve ever felt. Like I wouldn’t survive feeling the fear alone.”

“Me too,” Stan says, offering Eddie a watery smile. “Like...like your heart was just gonna give out, right?” Eddie nods shakily.

“I was thinking.” Ben sets his mug down. “There’s other things about that summer that we don’t remember, right?”

“Parts of it are fuzzy in my head,” Beverly mutters. “When I try to focus on those parts, my head starts to hurt.”

Bill looks pensive. “It’s l-like there’s a f-fog around our memories,” he says. “We need to do s-something to c-clear it away. Like...like the thorns around the c-castle in a fairytale.”

Ben nods. “No sense in fighting It if we don’t have our memories back. So we can start there. Right, Mike?”

“Right.” Mike shoots Ben a grateful look. “We can help each other remember. Retrace our steps, go all the places we went that summer.” Crossing to the window, he looks out at the night, laid over the farm like a shroud. “When we piece enough together, we’ll be ready to face It again. Once and for all,” he whispers, his fingertips automatically curling to touch the scar across his hand.

When they were young, Mike remembers his grandfather being suspicious of the other Losers at first, grumbling about Mike “acting like a damn fool, hanging out with the white kids.” Mike didn’t blame him, either; it’s not like anyone in Derry ever gave them any reason to trust them before. But then his grandfather seemed to see the change in him the more he spent time with them—how Mike opened up, stood taller, smiled more.

“True friends are hard to come by in this world,” his grandfather said to him out of the blue early one morning, while they were out doing the milking. “You do right by them, you hear?” Mike never forgot that, even after the others had all left. 

Mike turns back, and sees Bill looking at him. “We b-beat It together,” Bill says. Then he glances at Beverly. “Th-that’s what you said before, isn’t it? That’s how we s-survived the first time. By st-sticking together.”

Richie groans and drags a hand down the side of his face. “Well, if we’re literally gonna be terrified to death, at least we’ll be shitting our pants side by side,” he says finally.

“Losers shit our pants together,” Beverly agrees solemnly—and then somehow, all of them are laughing.

\--

For safety, they agree to sleep at least two to a room, and none of them can go anywhere in the house without a buddy. If one of them is in the bathroom, someone else has to be just outside the door—which is how Beverly winds up taking a shower with her new roommate Eddie on watch. The entire time, she glares at the drain, daring it to start spitting blood.

After she steps out of the stall, she looks at herself in the mirror for a while as she towels her hair, knowing now why she’d always preferred to keep it short. Lightly, Beverly traces the implant in her arm with her fingertips and wonders if Derry had subconsciously been the reason she’d gotten that too; why she’d gone on the pill in high school and felt immense relief when she realized she’d stopped her period completely.

Without warning, her thoughts turn to Tom. He probably hasn’t gone so far as to call the police, yet; he’s waiting for her to walk back through the door. In the meantime, he’s most likely gotten drunk—started overturning all the furniture, tearing down the designs pinned up in her workroom, smashing glasses on the floor. Tom had punched a mirror once, after a fight about the cut of one of the dresses she’d worn to Paris Fashion Week. Beverly remembers cleaning and bandaging his knuckles while he kissed the top of her head, whispering _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I never want to hurt you. I just can’t stand the thought of anyone else looking at you. I love you so much it drives me crazy._ Beverly’s jaw had felt wrenched out of its socket, the mirror hadn’t been the only thing he’d hit—but she’d held Tom as he sobbed into her shoulder. _I swear I’ll be better, Bevvie. I love you so much._

Probably he’s crying now, too. Part of Beverly wants to go back and comfort him, to say she’s sorry for hurting him, for leaving without trying to fix things between them first. Part of her thinks surely he’ll have learned his lesson this time; that her running away and turning off her phone to block his calls, and going back eventually on her own terms, will show him that she’s not just something to be pushed around. Another part of her spits in disgust at her own tender heart. Beverly balls her towel in her hands and leans against the sink.

“Bev?” Eddie calls tensely through the door, knocking twice. “You okay in there?”

“Yeah! Yeah, sorry, I forgot.“ Beverly opens the door on Eddie standing right there, his hand still in the air. “Water’s still hot, but don’t turn the knob all the—” she starts to say, and then the words die in her mouth, because Eddie is staring at the bruises on her neck.

Cold shoots down Beverly’s spine. She’d washed the makeup off and completely forgotten. She should have hidden it with her towel. She should have been more careful. No one was supposed to know. _Tom will be so angry, if he finds out I let someone else see—_

“It’s nothing,” Beverly says lightly, too quickly, trying to sidestep Eddie and escape out into the hall. “I accidentally ran into someone at the airport, and their shoulder went right into my—“

Eddie isn’t stupid. “Beverly,” he says. He reaches for her, and Beverly steps back, arms going up out of instinct.

Immediately, he drops his hands. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—“ Eddie moves back too, giving Beverly space. “I have a first-aid kit in the room,” he says quietly. “Does it hurt to swallow?” Beverly shakes her head. “Has it been more than thirty-six hours since...?” Beverly shakes her head again. “I’ll ask Mike for ice.”

It’s when they’re sitting on the edge of Beverly’s bed, after Eddie’s inspected her bruises with careful, clinical gentleness and begun wrapping the ice in a small clean towel, that he says, “I won’t tell the others unless you want to. But I do want to ask you something, if that’s all right.”

“I’m not some—battered wife,” Beverly blurts out, and already she knows how it must sound. But Eddie doesn’t know Tom. He’s never seen how gentle Tom could be, how funny, how protective. “It’s just sometimes he loses his temper, and—It’s not like he hits me every night.”

“Jesus, Beverly, he doesn’t have to.” Eddie’s jaw is tight as he hands her the compress. “Once is enough. Christ. I could kill him.”

A laugh spills out of Beverly, unexpected, because Eddie is so tiny that Tom could snap him in half like a Kitkat. But she puts the ice to the side of her neck and says, “Boy, what I wouldn’t give to get that on pay-per-view. You in the little wrestling leotard.”

“Ice on for twenty, off for fifteen,” Eddie says sternly, pointing. Then, softer, “Do you need anything?”

Bev gazes back at him. “Not judgment. Not pity.”

“I would never,” Eddie says simply, and Beverly’s heart swells with love for him. “Do you have anywhere to go, after this? Do you have access to your savings...something in a safety deposit box?”

Beverly thinks about how it’s Tom’s name on the lease, how he has half-ownership of the business; how Tom had convinced her it was best to make him a joint account holder on her personal bank account, since she had no living relatives and no one to help her with her assets. “I’m handling it,” Beverly says briskly. “Besides, I think we have bigger problems to deal with at the moment.”

Eddie presses his lips together. “One-third of the entire population of American women experiences domestic violence in their life,” he says. “That’s what, fifty million? One instance of domestic abuse every twenty minutes. I know the statistics for deaths, too.”

Beverly’s grip on the compress tightens. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying...your safety and your life outside of Derry aren’t unimportant. Killer clown or no.” Eddie stands and retrieves his bath towel, and the little mesh bag where he apparently keeps all his toiletries. “I’m not going to push you, Beverly. But just know that if you ever want someone to turn to—I’m here. We’re all here.”

Beverly offers him a smile, even if it’s a lie. “I know, Spaghetti Man.”

Rolling his eyes, Eddie says, “You’re as bad as Rich, you know that?” and closes the door.

As soon as he’s gone, Beverly shifts to lean back against the headboard and closes her eyes to try to rest. But all at once, the images come back to her, faster and faster, scarlet flashes behind her eyelids—and her eyes fly open again.

Because the part Beverly already remembered in the restaurant, the part she’ll never tell, is that when she was thirteen and in the Deadlights she saw all of them die. She saw Richie throwing himself off a bridge; Ben clutching a gaping wound in his gut and gasping for air; Bill floating facedown in a sewer tunnel; Mike with his limbs twisted and his neck broken at the bottom of the well. Stan, glassy-eyed in bathwater gone cold—Eddie impaled on a giant claw and choking on his own blood. Countless visions, an endless loop of scenarios—until she’d woken up.

They can’t all be true, Beverly thinks furiously. It must have been fucking with her. But she’ll be damned if she’ll let any of them even come close.

“Go to hell,” Beverly says aloud, pushing the ice against the point on her neck where her pulse beats. The cold water runs down her wrist, down her elbow, forming a dark puddle on the sheets.

\--

In the morning, everyone trudges downstairs to see that Ben really has put up an evidence wall in the living room, photos and newspaper clippings courtesy of Mike—all the people who have gone missing in the past few weeks, most of them kids. A boy who was murdered just a few days ago; his body torn apart, his throat ripped open like a second, red grin. Every twenty-seven years, Mike reminds them; a string of disappearances, random killings, and then a huge massacre. They’d stopped It the last time, before it had the chance to do anything worse. They’d been lucky.

There’s a map of Derry, too, with places of interest circled and numbered. The Aladdin on Main Street, the synagogue where Stan’s dad used to preach, all of their old houses. Ben’s made a list, with the heading _WHAT WE KNOW:_

_1) Every 27 years_

_2) Connected by sewer system_

_3) Neibolt = old well house, ITs lair_

“If there’s anything else that you wind up remembering, any other place you think might bring memories back—put it on the board,” Mike tells them.

“I swear I’m forgetting something here.” Ben puts his marker down and runs a hand through his hair in frustration. Stan gently pushes a fresh mug of coffee into his free hand. “Thanks, Stan—no, it’s, it’s like when a word’s on the tip of your tongue, you know? On the edge of my remembering, but I can’t grasp it yet somehow.”

“So you say all of these people have been terrorized by a nasty killer clooown, eh? Well, that sounds pretty wild,” Richie comments in a creaky old-man voice, taking a long slurp of his own coffee.

Eddie frowns at him. “Who is that supposed to be?”

Richie stares. “Who’s it supposed to—it’s Keith Morrison from Dateline, you uncultured swine.”

“Keith _Morrison?”_ Eddie asks, incredulous. “That sounds nothing like Keith Morrison, numbnuts, Keith Morrison has a rich, beautiful baritone that sounds like freshly-polished dark mahogany. Keith Morrison’s voice deserves its own fucking Emmy. You sound like a, like a fucking rusty door hinge.”

“Funny, that’s not what your mom said to me the other night.”

“My mom is _dead,_ you asshole, and besides that’s barely even a comeback, not everything can be turned into a your mom joke—“

“Children? Are you two done?” Stan asks dryly, his arms folded.

“Oh, I’m never done with this one,” Richie says with a lofty grin, while Eddie continues spluttering at him like a wet cat.

They agree to head out to the library first, where Mike works, to see if looking through the old archives will help. The air is laced with heat and dust and salt, thick on their tongues. As they walk, Bill is struck by a strong sense memory—a small, sweaty and slightly grubby hand in his, pulling him along; then breaking away with a high-pitched squeal of laughter, _tag, Billy,_ _you’re it!_ He shakes it off and walks faster.

The library is almost exactly how they remember it, frozen in time—the dusty shelves and scuffed wooden chairs, the high windows that fill the room with a blank, watered-down kind of light—with the only new addition being the row of clunky-looking computer stations along the wall.

It’s mostly empty, save for a senior or two doing the crossword puzzles, and a small group of teens who are clearly vaping in the encyclopedia section, but who hurriedly rearrange themselves when Mike raises an eyebrow at them as he passes. “That’s some librarian superpower you got there,” Stan tells him.

“Just doing my job. Oh, hey.” Mike laughs quietly and taps the summer reads display, where a couple of Bill’s books are propped up on a stand.

“God.” Bill makes a face. “You actually carry those?”

“Sure do. You’re very popular with the Derry Ladies Who Lunch book club.” Mike chuckles, his eyes twinkling. Bill rubs the back of his neck.

 _“The Smile,”_ Richie reads off the cover of one. “You say this is supposed to be _horror,_ Billiam? I don’t get what’s so horrifying about a smile.”

“I do, I just have to look at yours,” Beverly responds without missing a beat.

“See, now _that’s_ a good comeback,” Eddie tells Richie pleasantly, clapping him on the shoulder.

Ben, meanwhile, is looking around as reverently as if he was in a church. “God, I remember now...I spent so much time here,” he murmurs, hands in his pockets. “Y’know, I think this was the only place in Derry I felt the most like myself.”

Eddie blinks at him. “What are you talking about? You had us.”

But Ben shakes his head. “I dunno, I always kind of felt like...I was the eager puppy tagging along, and you guys were just humoring me, or something. The weird new kid who liked making dioramas in shoeboxes and hanging out in the library in his free time.”

“Ben, no. We were all the weird kid,” Stan says. “We were all _bullied,_ for crying out loud. That’s what the Losers’ Club was all about.”

Ben shrugs. “When I moved away, none of you wrote back to me. I tried calling, but none of you were ever home to answer your phones... You know I, I wrote all your names on my arm before we drove over the county line, and then I rewrote them every night, because I was so determined not to forget.” He smiles, small and bittersweet. “But after a while I guess I did, too.”

Bill remembers now; Ben’s mom made the decision to move out of Derry a year after the summer of IT, just as the school year was ending. He doesn’t remember getting any letters or calls from Ben after he moved away; he doesn’t even remember what the five of them did, that first summer without him. Likely it had been the same old pointless teenage foolishness—sneaking Richie’s dad’s beers out of the fridge to share, hanging around outside the Aladdin and making awkward attempts at chatting up girls from out of town. And all the while Ben had been sitting by the phone, waiting for them to reach out to him.

Guilt scratches at the inside of Bill’s chest. They’d been the ones to stay behind; _they_ should have been the ones to remember _Ben._ How could they have forgotten Ben? “I’m s-s-sorry,” Bill forces out. “W-We didn’t mean—“

Ben laughs a little. “Guys, it’s fine. We were kids, you know? It happens.”

There’s an uncomfortable silence before Mike clears his throat. “The archives are in the basement,” he says.

The lighting in the basement is ghostly and green, like they’ve descended into the hull of a submarine. Mike mutters reference numbers to himself and goes to retrieve yearbooks and newspapers from 1989, while Eddie puts on a face mask that he produced from the fanny pack around his waist. _“Dust mites,”_ he insists, when he sees Beverly’s mouth contorting in an attempt not to laugh.

“Here,” Mike says, spreading the stack of materials across the metal table in the corner. “Any of this do anything for you?”

It does, a little. Bill looks at the photographs, reads snatches of articles, and feels the vague shapes of memory in his mind crystallize further. The others are exclaiming over the photos too, pointing and asking each other _do you remember when we? How about the time when?_

Richie, however, got bored quickly and wandered off, and is now flipping carelessly through a bound volume of ancient comic books. Eddie glances at him over his shoulder. “Be careful with those, don’t rip ‘em with your giant ape hands,” Eddie hisses.

Richie waggles his eyebrows. “I can think of plenty of people who don’t have problems with my giant ha—“ But the joke dies in his mouth when the first red balloon comes drifting out from between the bookshelves, bobbing innocently in the air.

“Fuck,” Eddie says, backing up as more of the balloons appear, moving closer and closer. “Holy shit! Fuck! _Fuck!”_

Then all the lights die at once, and they hear a deep laugh that stretches out long, too long, turning high and gleeful.

“Go, _go!”_ Mike roars, and they all race for the stairs. They’re tripping over each others’ ankles, grabbing each others’ hands and hauling each other forward, and Bill thinks he feels gloved fingers snatching playfully at the hem of his shirt, closing around his shoulders—

And then, just as quickly as they went out, the lights come back on with a _snap,_ the static hum of electricity suffusing the sudden silence—and the old librarian, Mrs. Cooper, is standing on the bottom step glaring at them. “What in the world is going on down here?” she demands. Bill turns around, still panting. No clown. Nothing.

“Rats,” Mike says hastily. “You know how we had to call the exterminator last month? They started coming out of the walls again, and, uh...”

Mrs. Cooper sniffs and continues glowering at them through her spectacles, and for a second Bill feels all of twelve years old. “That’s certainly no reason to cause a ruckus in the library. I expected better from you, Michael,” she says, as they file past her shamefacedly.

“I feel like I genuinely don’t know who scares me more, that clown, or your boss,” Stan says under his breath.

“Some days, I don’t know either,” Mike mutters, as they escape out into the daylight.

\--

Derry’s Main Street is covered in colorful banners and posters advertising the Canal Days festival. No one talks about the smaller _MISSING_ posters plastered up between them here and there, the stark black-and-white faces smiling out at them from already-fading photocopies. The juxtaposition is grotesque, the way the townspeople don’t stop to look even worse. Beverly wants to burn it all to the ground.

It’s near midday now, the sun oppressive on their backs—odd, for Maine in the summer. Somehow Beverly likes it, finds a grim satisfaction in feeling the sweat trickling down her neck from her hair. Richie, on the other hand, isn’t so happy. “Man, it’s hotter than the devil’s ballsack,” he grovels, flapping the collar of his shirt.

“I almost wish we could g-go for a swim or s-something,” Bill agrees, blinking sweat from his eyes. “W-Was it always like this?”

“There’s a heat wave,” Mike says, glancing backwards briefly like he wants to make sure they’re all there; like a sheepdog checking on his flock. Beverly’s noticed he does that often. “Temperature’s at the highest it’s been in the past decade or so.”

Ben is grinning. “Makes you think we should just take our shirts off, huh, Eddie?” he asks.

Eddie stares. “Why would I want to do that?”

“You said it. At the restaurant last night.” Ben chuckles, glancing at Richie. “Remember? You were arm-wrestling and he said _let’s take our shirts off and—“_

“When did—I did not! Stan, did I say that?”

“You did, in fact, say that,” Stan informs Eddie witheringly.

As they cross from one street corner to the next, Beverly draws close to Mike’s side. “Mike, listen, shouldn’t we be getting—weapons, or something?” she asks. “If IT knows we’re here, if IT’s going to keep coming for us even before we get to the well house—“

“I don’t think weapons would do much good against what IT really is,” Mike says, gently steering Beverly around a small pile of dog shit. “Besides, we can’t exactly go tramping around town with guns. I don’t even have one on the farm.”

Beverly opens her mouth, then closes it. “No guns?”

“No,” Mike says firmly. “Not since my grandfather died.”

“No problemo. We’ve got these guns right here,” Richie says, punching Ben’s bicep. Ben looks embarrassed.

Walking down Main Street, Beverly realizes all the adults they pass either don’t pay them any mind, or kind of squint suspiciously at Mike before proceeding to squint suspiciously at the rest of the group. But the ones who do pay attention are the kids. “Hey, Mike,” a bunch of them call out as they leave the ice cream parlor, melting cones in hand. A tiny boy who doesn’t look older than four whispers, “Hi, Mikey.”

“Hey, Kendra. Hey, Alice, Deedee. Hunter! You’re getting tall, man.” Mike holds out his hand, grinning, and they all slap him low fives.

“Are you going to the festival?” one of the kids asks, slurping at her popsicle.

“Maybe.” Mike glances over his shoulder at the others. “Hey, if you guys go, remember what I told you?”

“Stay with a buddy, don’t wander off, and don’t talk to strangers,” they all say, some of them clearly scrambling to recite it. Mike makes them say it again until they can all shout it in unison, and only then does he wave them off.

“You’re g-good with them,” Bill says as they continue up the street.

Mike shakes his head and sighs. “For a while they kept trying to get me on this thing, Plant or Leaf or something...”

“Oh my god, he means Vine,” Richie whispers excitedly, elbowing Eddie. “Can you imagine Mike as a dad on Vine who doesn’t know what Vine is? That’s fucking perfect.”

“What’s Vine?” Eddie asks.

Richie rolls his eyes. “I stand corrected. I’m in the presence of _two_ dads who don’t know what Vine is.”

Pressing his lips together, Mike continues, “I tried to start a petition to get the festival shut down this year. Pointed out all the safety hazards. People wouldn’t buy it, but it was worth a shot.”

“You don’t think...” Stan looks pale. “IT’s going to try to...”

Mike looks grim. “The festival’s closing ceremony is on Saturday. It’ll be the biggest event of the year.”

Today is Wednesday. They keep walking.

They pass by the closed-down Aladdin, sad in its decrepitness, and then the pharmacy where Beverly realizes she met them all for the first time. Then Richie stops walking and bends over halfway, wheezing. “Are we really gonna keep walking everywhere?” he asks. “My feet are killing me.”

Mike pauses right in front of a large shop window, looks in, and grins. “I have an idea.”

They exit the rental shop ten minutes later, each with a bicycle in tow. Bill looks absolutely delighted about it, while Eddie looks nervous. “Aww, forget how to ride a bike, Eds?” asks Richie, who’s already riding around him in wobbly circles. “Did Spagheddie forgeddie?”

“Shut up, dickwad, you can’t forget how to ride a bike,” Eddie says through gritted teeth, bracing one foot on the pedal and staring at the road ahead. “I’m gearing up to it, that’s all.”

“Takes you that long to gear up, huh? Your wife must not be too happy about th—” Richie, not looking where he’s going, promptly crashes right into Beverly, and they both fall over in a tangle of bicycle frames and limbs.

“Watch it, Tozier,” Beverly grumbles, crawling over Richie to get up.

Richie yelps in pain and attempts a badly-aimed kick at her ankle. “Make me, Marsh Thing.”

Beverly scoffs and rights her bike. “You _really_ need better material.”

Eventually, somehow, all seven of them are able to mount their bikes and set off. “How did we ever do this when we were kids?” Ben asks, swerving to narrowly avoid Bill. “I didn’t realize how much we had to focus on not bumping into each other.”

“I don’t think we r-really thought about it consciously,” Bill says. “It was ins-s-stinct. Instinct,” he says again, patting the handlebars of his bike. The wind is running through his hair, and he looks—peaceful. Handsome, Beverly thinks, fond at seeing the man Bill grew into. She remembers she nursed a crush on him, that final month of summer before she moved to Portland—that the day they all came to see her off, crowding around the side of her aunt’s car to squash her in a group hug, Bill secretly slipped a paper crane into her hand that had _see you later_ written underneath its wing. They’d been so young.

Pulling off to the side of the pack, Beverly lets herself fall behind a little, just so she can watch her six friends as they pedal along, bickering and laughing. She wonders what would have happened if she’d never stepped in that day at the drugstore, just because she thought it would be funny to help them steal Betadine and a box of Band-Aids. If she’d never followed them to—wherever it was she’d followed them to, Beverly thinks, frowning; if she’d never even known Pennywise existed at all. What would’ve happened if their lives had never intersected the way they did, and who she would have become then.

But Beverly is who she is, in this life, and in this life she thinks, _you can’t lose them._ She pedals harder until she’s neck and neck with Mike, pushing past him for the lead, and the sunlit street around her blurs out. The seven of them ride in formation, weaving carefully around each other—beginning to remember that once they knew each others’ speed by heart, the way they turned and dipped and coasted along just like this, feeling free, and alive, and untouchable.

\--

Bill’s house is up for sale, so they pretend they’re there to do a viewing. They poke around the kitchen and what used to be Bill’s bedroom, before Bill remembers. “The c-c-cellar,” he says, sucking his breath in. “I s-saw IT in the cellar.”

Warily, they descend the steps with the lights on and the door open behind them, and for a while they think there’ll be nothing here, either—until Bill sees a small figure standing in the corner. A small figure wearing a yellow raincoat, with a ragged stump where his right arm used to be. Georgie, whom Bill had forgotten for twenty-seven years; whose name he had forbidden himself from thinking, even after Derry gave him the memory back. Georgie, his brother, whom he’d loved, whom he’d buried, whom he’d let go out into the rain alone.

“Billy,” it says, using Georgie’s sweet little-boy voice, and Bill is filled with a revulsion so deep it knocks something loose inside him.

“I kn-know what you’re going to s-say,” Bill snarls, advancing down the last steps. His gaze hard and unflinching on this thing, not Georgie, _not Georgie._ “You g-going to tell me I’ll float, too?”

But instead, Georgie looks back at him sadly, and whispers, “It should have been you.”

Bill stops. “What?” he croaks.

“Bill,” Mike says, a warning hand on his shoulder. But he can’t look away.

“You were supposed to protect me. That’s what Mom always said, right?” Georgie tilts his head, his eyes wide with confusion. He takes a step towards Bill, his shadow on the cellar wall looming taller and taller. “So I should still be alive. Why are you still alive? It should have been you.”

“Y-You—“ Bill’s throat is locked up. Two hands on his shoulders now, Mike and Richie trying to pull him back, but he can’t move, either.

“You should be with me instead. I miss you, Billy,” Georgie says.

“Georgie,” Bill whispers.

“I’ve _missed_ you, Billy,” Pennywise croons, and lunges.

Bill screams back at him in animal rage, grabs something—a paint can—off the nearest shelf and hurls it at the clown. The can soars through the air, suddenly impeded by nothing, and hits the opposite wall and smashes open. Paint splatters across the floor, rivers of sickly yellow-white.

“Bill, come on,” Beverly says, grabbing Bill’s hand and turning his face to hers, blue eyes blazing. “Come on, come on—“

They apologize profusely to the homeowners while Stan and Ben attempt to clean up the paint, until the husband sighs and says it’s fine and to just leave it. Outside, Beverly leads Bill across the yard until he feels like his knees have finally given up. He sits down hard on the sidewalk, curling over with his face in his hands, and the others gather around him wordlessly.

“You know it’s not true, right, Bill?” Eddie asks quietly after a while. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yeah, man, it wasn’t your fault.” Richie pushes his glasses up his nose. “And that wasn’t Georgie.”

“I just,” Bill says, staring out into the street. He feels so far away from his body. “I r-remember what it was like, after he...” The jagged and ugly thing inside him surges up, and he lets out a torn, shaky breath. “The house was s-so quiet,” he says finally. “A-And my parents, they were so...It was like the life had g-gone out of them, t-too. Even in the years after, they were so d-distant, and, and s-s-some part of me always thought that they couldn’t—“ _That they couldn’t forgive me,_ Bill thinks. That they couldn’t love him; that all their love died with Georgie.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Eddie repeats firmly, his hand a soothing back-and-forth between Bill’s shoulder blades. “You were sick and in bed, Bill. You didn’t know. You were just a kid.”

“I c-can’t remember what he was like,” Bill whispers brokenly. “It’s all—j-jumbled together in m-my head, IT and G-Georgie. I can barely remember the r-real Georgie.”

“Well, I do,” Stan says. Bill blinks up at him, and Stan offers him a small smile. “I remember how...he’d get out of kindergarten first, so he used to sit on the front steps waiting for us,” Stan continues, carefully lowering himself to the curb to sit next to Bill. “And when we got out of class he’d pretend he’d been waiting for hours and hours, he’d fake-cough pretending his throat was dry, because he wanted us to take him to the diner for a milkshake.”

Richie starts to laugh, and adds, “Yeah...yeah, and there was that time when we were playing, foursquare or dodgeball or something in your yard, and we accidentally broke one of your mom’s new flowerpots? And Georgie saw what happened and told your mom that he did it, because he didn’t want you to get yelled at and he knew your mom would be less mad at him?” Bill laughs a little and scrubs at his eyes.

Eddie’s grinning now, too. “You know that lisp he used to do on purpose to be cute? Remember that?”

His eyes are still wet, but he’s smiling. “Yeah,” Bill says. “Yeah, I do.”

He does, now—but the truth is, it’s not enough to quiet the thing inside him, too big to fit inside his chest. Because they’re his friends, but they’re not his brother, and they will never understand.

\--

For Eddie, it’s Sonia, but covered in sores oozing pus and with her skin rotting off her bones, howling _Eddie-bear, why won’t you give me a kiss_ as she lurches down the hall of his old house, hands reaching for them. “I know it’s you, you fucking clown,” Eddie screams back, as moths and roaches and rats come flooding out of the cupboards, divebombing all of them.

It’s muscle memory, it’s instinct, Richie grabbing Eddie underneath both arms and pulling him towards him, even as Eddie’s still screaming himself hoarse. “Fuck off!” he shrieks—at IT, or maybe at Richie, he doesn’t know—lashing out at the leper with both feet. “Fuck off! You unhygienic son of a bitch!”

The leper-Sonia makes a horrible retching noise and swipes at Eddie. Shaking himself half-free of Richie’s grip, Eddie kicks out again, but it’s badly timed, all wrong—and leper-Sonia grabs his ankle and pulls, hard. And Richie—can’t hold him, he lets go, and Eddie goes down and the fucking thing is dragging him across the floor as he screams, streaks of pus and dark blood on the tiles.

“Isn’t he delectable,” the leper snarls as it begins to bear down on Eddie, its blackened tongue protruding wormlike from its twisted mouth. Then it stops, and looks up, right at Richie. “Don’t you think he looks delicious, Richie?” it leers. “Wouldn’t you just _eat him up?”_

And Richie rakes dead insects’ wings out of his eyes and charges forward and he’s screaming too, screaming “Eddie, Eddie _no,_ you motherfucker get off him _don’t you touch him—“_

And then Beverly is there, throwing herself bodily at the leper with a cry of rage, crashing right into it with her shoulder. Richie skids to a halt. The leper staggers, enough to let Eddie kick it in the stomach and roll away. Ben isn’t far behind, immediately putting himself between the creature and Beverly, fists raised, while Mike and Bill are already hauling Eddie to his feet. Behind them, Stan is holding the door open, shouting for them to get out, get out _now._

“It’s inside you, Eddie,” screeches the corpse of Eddie’s mother, raising its arms after them. The insects are circling it in a whirling cloud now, and the thing lets loose a wet, rattling cough, dribbling black ooze down its chin. “The disease. The _rot._ You can’t escape it. It’s a part of you.”

Richie opens his mouth to tell Eddie not to listen, not to look—but it’s too late because Eddie has caught sight of his reflection in the hall mirror, and let out a strangled-sounding gasp. Because in the mirror, Eddie is a leper too, his skin cracked and bleeding, eye sockets empty and crusted-over, gnarled hands clawing at his own face in horror.

And then they’re all pulling Eddie out of there, slamming the front door on leper-Sonia, and they can’t get away fast enough. They bike and bike, letting the wind strip away the unbearable stench clinging to them, and Richie is shaking so hard he can barely hold onto his handlebars, thinking _you let go, you almost lost him, you fucking idiot, you can never, ever do that again._

“It wasn’t like—she wasn’t a monster,” Eddie bursts out finally, when they’re seated in the diner for lunch, huddled around a corner table. “I mean yeah, in hindsight maybe she had Munchausen by proxy, but my dad had just died of cancer, of course she was paranoid about something happening to me. I was all she had left. I was _all she had,”_ Eddie repeats angrily, sounding like he’s daring anyone to challenge him.

Everyone else is silent then, looking down at the slightly greasy wooden table, the names and swearwords gouged into the corners by kids with ballpoint pens. Eddie’s breathing is fast, and he’s scratching the insides of his arms, the broken capillaries peppered red underneath his skin. “Hey, hey, stop,” Ben says finally, covering Eddie’s hand with his. “Breathe slower. Hold it, then let go.” Eddie screws his mouth up tight, but he does what Ben says, long breaths in and out through his nose until his breathing slows to normal.

On the other side of the table, Richie feels big and dumb and powerless to help. But he swallows and forces out, in a low voice, “Your mom was a dick, Eds.”

Eddie’s gaze snaps up, hot and focused. “Oh, yeah, real helpful, Rich, that’s really considerate of you.”

“No, it’s true. Your mom was a huge asshole. She wanted to control your entire life. For you to be totally dependent on her forever.” It’s hard, but Richie forces himself to look Eddie in the eye when he says it, because he needs him to hear. “You don’t deserve to be treated like that, by anyone, ever. And you shouldn’t have to—to carry that around with you anymore.”

Somewhere inside him, an alarm bell is ringing faintly, and Richie suddenly thinks he shouldn’t have said it; that he’s crossed some kind of line, that it was stupid and dangerous and too _much_ to have said that right to Eddie’s face even if it was true. Because the way Eddie is looking at him right now, the anger draining out of his expression and giving way to a soft kind of surprise and incomprehension, around his eyes and his mouth, is like—

Then someone looms over Richie’s shoulder, casting a shadow over the table.

Richie jumps in his seat and yelps, but it’s just the waitress, setting down their sandwiches and plates of corned beef hash. “Calm your tits, sugar, I’m not that ugly,” she drawls, giving Richie an odd look as she walks away.

“Richie’s right, though,” Mike tells Eddie gently, while Richie immediately takes the opportunity to jam several french fries into his mouth before he makes the mistake of saying anything else. “It’s a heavy burden, growing up knowing that all of someone’s hopes and wishes and fears are pinned on you. I mean, of course you loved your mom, Eddie, but...you know you’re allowed to be angry at her too, if you need to be.”

Eddie gets a sour-lemon look and shakes his head a little. “I’m not angry at her. I think...I think I feel sorry for her. She was just trying to do her best. To raise me right. To love me.” He lifts the edge of his omelette with his fork and peers critically at the inside, like he’s checking whether they added the ingredients in the right order or something. Richie can’t tell if he finds that deeply weird or deeply endearing.

“She was trying her best. And she did love you. But she also still did things to you that you can’t exactly...undo, whether she meant to or not,” Stan says quietly, folding his teabag wrapper and tucking it underneath his saucer. “Both things can be true. It’s okay to acknowledge that, at least.”

Eddie decidedly does not acknowledge it, and starts gutting his omelette with his fork and knife in grim silence instead. Everybody else takes the hint.

Uncomfortable in the sudden silence, Richie wrestles with his sloppy burger and tries to sort through his thoughts. In spite of the thought labeled _Hey, An Evil Clown Is Trying To Murder Us!_ popping up constantly over everything like an annoying ad for Viagra, he’s aware a lot of the tabs currently open in his brain are Eddie-related; have been ever since he walked into the restaurant last night and caught sight of him across the room and felt like the world stopped spinning.

Richie can’t explain it, but it’s like the sound of Eddie’s voice, the way he moves, the way he breathes huffily and his eyebrows furrow and his mouth pulls down when he’s annoyed, everything—all of Eddie just feels like he _fits._ Like he was the missing puzzle piece in Richie’s life all along. And in spite of the aforementioned murder clown, somehow everything just feels—better, now that Richie has him back.

Eddie reminds him of one of those bobbly-headed dogs with the big eyes that sits on a car dashboard, and Richie just wants to pick him up and shake him as hard as he can to hear his clackety head rattle. Eddie is like if cilantro were a person, or maybe one of those tiny Thai chili peppers. If Eddie were ever kidnapped, the kidnappers would probably straight up return him before the twenty-four hours were up because he’d be complaining about the bathrooms the entire time. The idea is making Richie delirious.

“Dude, can you stop twitching, you’re making me hyperventilate,” Eddie snaps.

Richie didn’t even realize he’d been jiggling his knee underneath the table. He stops the knee and fights the urge to drum his hands on the table, too.

Eddie glares at his omelette, which he barely ate in spite of his total dissection of it, and throws his fork down in resignation. “I don’t think I can eat after what we saw.” He stares at Richie. “How are _you_ eating?”

Richie makes a show of chewing extra wetly, and then opens his mouth to show Eddie. “Like that,” he replies matter-of-factly.

“Charming.” Eddie huffs, clapping a Xanax into his mouth. “You are still twelve years old on the inside.”

“We need a better strategy going forward,” Mike says. He starts moving the condiments and napkin holders into the middle of the table. “Some kind of formation when we enter a place, so we’re all safe. I’ll be in the front, with one other person—”

“Me,” Bill and Ben say simultaneously, then glance at each other.

Mike pushes the pepper shaker across the table. “And we need someone with good eyes in the back as well, to make sure we’re covered on all sides. So Eddie, you can bring up the rear, and Richie, you can guard him—“

“Wait, I don’t want to be the mayo,” Richie complains.

“Beep beep,” Mike says absently, plopping the bottle of mayo down.

While Mike, Bill, and Ben continue hashing out their strategy, Richie subtly swivels his plate around so his untouched side salad is in full view of Eddie, counting on him to notice. Sure enough, Eddie does. “You’re not gonna eat your salad?” Eddie whispers out of the corner of his mouth, eyeing Richie. “How many servings of vegetables do you eat in a day? No, scratch that, how many have you eaten in your entire life?”

“I’m allergic to vegetables. They give me hives. And like, backne.” Richie motions to his shoulders. “You want ‘em? The vegetables I mean, not the backne. There’s no nuts in here, either, if you’re worried about your allergies or something.”

Eddie scowls. “Fine, give it here,” he says. Richie slides the plate towards him, and Eddie takes a forkful of lettuce. Richie watches him out of the corner of his eye for a while, just to make sure.

“It’s just, I don’t know how many more times I can do this,” Stan is saying. He lets out a weak laugh, rubbing his forehead—and Richie recognizes the odd halfway smile on Stan’s face, remembers that Stan smiles like that when he’s scared. “If IT’s going to find us everywhere we go, attack us—“

“But we’re s-stronger than IT,” Bill tells him. “We—“ Then he looks at Richie. “You did something,” he says, blinking. “Back then, in the s-sewers. You had...a b-baseball bat, or something. And y-you called IT an asshole.”

“I did?” Everything about the sewers is still fuzzy in Richie’s head; if he concentrates on it too hard, he gets nauseous. “Sounds like something I would do, I guess... You think _that’s_ the secret to defeating IT? Rude epithets?”

Bill starts to answer, but then Eddie speaks. “I remember. When IT had me cornered, when we were in Neibolt...IT said...” Eddie swallows. “ _You all taste so much better when you’re afraid.”_

“So IT doesn’t just want to kill us,” Beverly says slowly. “IT wants us to be scared, IT—gets off on us being scared.”

“Worst kink ever,” Richie mutters.

Beverly doesn’t even honor that with a _beep beep._ “So we just have to...not be afraid,” she says, her forehead crinkling. “We already know the things IT shows us aren’t real. So we don’t feed IT with our fear. IT starves, IT’s easier to kill.”

“I get what you’re saying, Bev, but I don’t think we can just—switch it off like that,” Ben says gently. “I mean, even if we know what IT shows us isn’t real, it’s not like any of us can choose what we’re afraid of, or when it affects us.”

“We can try,” Beverly and Eddie blurt out at the same time, then look at each other in surprise and laugh a little. Something weird flip-flops in the pit of Richie’s stomach at the sight, and he takes a gulp of coffee.

Bill looks at Eddie again. “At your house. Did you c-call IT an unhygienic s-son of a bitch?” he asks, the corner of his mouth quirking upward.

Eddie hesitates. “I—yeah. Why?”

Bill rubs his chin and glances away. “N-No reason,” he says, clearly hiding a smile.

Eddie flushes and looks down at his plate. God, Richie could just squeeze him like a tube of toothpaste.

\--

When Stan was a boy, before he’d had the word _anxiety_ to name the thing he felt sometimes plucking at his spine, the thing that made him freeze up and stole all his words—he’d asked his mother, “What do you do when you’re scared?”

He’d expected his mother to tell him she prayed. But she’d smoothed the hair back from his face and said, “When I’m angry, or afraid, or in the middle of something I can’t control—I say the names of all the flowers I know.” She smiled at him like she already knew why he was asking. “Daffodil, daisy, buttercup, orchid. I list every single one I can think of, and by the time I run out—if I even run out—I feel I’m standing on my own two feet again.” Then his mother kissed him on the forehead and said, “We breathe deep, my love. Then we keep going. That’s what we do.”

It became something Stan did privately, growing up—to stop his hands from shaking whenever he had to get up in front of the class to speak; to stop himself from falling down the spiral tunnels in his mind whenever his father said how disappointed he was in him, how he would never expect this behavior from any son of his. But instead of his mom’s flowers, Stan named birds. _Sparrow, bluebird, magpie, wren,_ he would chant in his mind. And little by little, bird by bird, the tension and the tremors would leach out of him, until Stan could breathe deep again.

This is what Stan does now, too, as they approach the synagogue. _Kingfisher, finch,_ he recites as they climb the steps, _red-breasted robin._ He texted Patty before they headed out earlier, ending with _miss you already, I love you._ Cockatoo, cockatiel, scarlet macaw.

This one is mine, he thinks, and sets his hand on the door.

Stan glances over his shoulder at his friends. “Turn your phones off, goys,” he says. “Place of worship.” Then he takes a deep breath, and pushes the door open. As they enter the hushed room, the seven of them fall into formation—Mike and Bill flanking Stan at the head, Ben and Beverly on either side, Eddie and Richie at the back.

The most familiar thing that hits Stan first is the smell; wood polish and dust and burning candles. The synagogue is empty, as Stan guessed it would be—but also somehow smaller than he thought he remembered. He glances at the prayer books resting on the seats, and recalls all the early Saturday mornings when it was his task to weave through the room and space the books neatly along the pews.

“Clown or no, this place just feels creepy by default,” Richie pipes up from behind.

“That’s just because you’re a heathen. Keep your voice d—“ Stan starts to say, and then stops.

There’s a rustling sound coming from behind the bimah. A rustling like feathers, and then a soft squelching. All of them freeze.

Bill’s eyes flicker up to Mike. “T-Together?” he asks quietly.

Mike nods. “Together.”

Slowly, they all inch closer to the platform and circle around to the step. The squelching noises grow louder, and Stan feels himself shrinking back, wanting to hide behind the others. The black coil in his gut stirs, his pulse pounding in his throat.

Bill and Mike are the ones who see it first. They both recoil with a gasp, and Mike immediately whirls and tries to push Stan out of the way. “Stan, no, don’t look,” Mike says, gripping his shoulders—but it’s too late, because Stan’s eyes have locked onto it in terror, and he has already seen.

There’s a body lying on the floor behind the bimah. Its arms are stiff at its sides, and it’s dressed in a blue shirt and a pair of dark slacks; ones that Stan used to help his mom fold, along with the rest of the clean laundry. Even the shoes Stan recognizes, scuffed brown leather men’s shoes, with tassels hanging off the ends of the laces. But the body—

Is being swarmed by crows, at least a dozen of them, a writhing mass of feathers—crowding and clambering over one another to get to the gaping cavity in the body’s chest, pecking and tearing away pieces of viscera. Their wings are matted with blood, and when they tip their heads back to swallow, their beaks are glistening wet.

“It’s not real, Stan,” Eddie says urgently, grabbing his arm, but Stan doesn’t feel it. He’s rooted to the spot, seeing darkness dance at the edges of his vision. Something is squeezing his chest. He can’t breathe. He can’t—

And then one of the crows stops eating and turns its head, fixing its dark eye on them. It caws, a harsh sound that sounds like a burst of cruel laughter—and now the cawing is filling the room, echoing around them. Coming down from the rafters.

The seven of them are standing in a tight circle now, facing outward, moving each other into place so they’re all back to back. “Don’t break the circle,” Mike shouts, and then the birds plummet down towards them.

Everything is a flurry of black feathers and screeching. Stan flings his arms up and cries out, flailing wildly at the crows until the strength goes out of him, the waves of panic surging up to choke him, and he curls his arms over his head, letting the crows peck at his arms and his back. He knows things are happening around him, knows his friends are fighting and they’re in danger, too; but it all seems so far away, too far outside of his body for him to help.

“We’re not afraid of you shitty clown birds,” someone—Eddie—yells, but his voice is muffled in Stan’s ears, like Stan is deep underwater. “We eat birds like you for breakfast.”

“Yeah, you fuckers ever heard of Colonel Sanders?” Richie chimes in. “He’s coming for you and he’s gonna deep-fry your asses so fast—”

And then the crows disperse, and the thing behind the bimah lurches to its feet. Comes down from the platform and staggers towards them, intestines spilling to the floor. “You did this, you know,” IT says, Stan’s father says.

“I—I didn’t,” Stan gasps, backing away, out of the circle. His vision is blurring over, and the ringing in his ears grows louder. Elbows locked up, hands numb.

“Such a coward. Such a disappointment, I lost the will to live,” his father continues, blood gurgling from his lips.

Stan, someone far away is shouting. Stan, move, Stan—and he knows that’s his name, he knows what the word means, but he can’t command his body to do it. He can’t move, can’t think, can’t _breathe—_

“Go ahead. Say the names of the birds, Stanley,” his father says. He tilts his head, almost curiously—and then keeps tilting his head, until it’s turned all the way around, like an owl’s. Then the monster says, slowly and deliberately, with a spreading grin, “Sparrow. Bluebird. Magpie. Wren.”

“No,” Stan chokes. “No.”

IT turns ITs head back right side up. Takes a step forward. “Cockatoo. Cockatiel. Scarlet macaw. Are you less afraid now, Stanley?”

“Fuck you,” Stan shouts, his voice breaking. “Fuck you, fuck you—“

“Blue-gray gnatcatcher. Cerulean warbler. Iceland gull,” IT leers. And then ITs eyes widen, lightless pools, and whispers with red saliva dripping from ITs jaws, _“Kookaburra.”_

Stan screams, and IT raises ITs—talons, IT has talons, and now a beak bursting from where ITs mouth was, with rows of teeth like needles, and IT is lunging for Stan with a shriek, and Stan drops to the floor and closes his eyes and screams, and screams.

But the teeth don’t come, and instead Stan hears a dull thunk, a slimy-sounding kind of impact. When he opens his eyes, he sees that one of the prayer books is embedded fully in the center of ITs forehead.

And Bill is standing there, arm stretched out in front of him like he’s just thrown a baseball pitch, and he’s looking at Stan and roaring, “S-Stanley, come on! Stan, _move!”_

Mike starts hurling prayer books too, and IT is swiping at them and howling, and Stan can’t even get to his feet. He tries to crawl away, but he’s shaking so hard he can barely even move himself along the floor. Crows are dropping down from the ceiling again, but now they’re—mutating, second heads with mouths full of teeth, extra pairs of wings, tarantula legs sprouting from their bodies.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Eddie fumbles with his fanny pack, pulls out a small bottle, and sprays it at the first bird-creature that leaps at him. The bird screeches and crashes to the floor, legs twitching, and Mike stamps on it hard with his boot. Eddie lets out a bark of laughter. “Yeah! How d’you like the taste of pepper spray, you fucking chickens?”

“No good if they ain’t extra crispy,” Richie shouts, grinning, and holds his lighter in the air. The next crow that dives at Richie’s head is set alight, filling the room with the smell of burning tar.

Beverly shakes off a crow-thing that had latched onto her leg and stomps on it, letting out a savage sound through her teeth, before kicking its carcass away hard. Then she looks up, her gaze snapping onto Stan, who’s still on the floor, curled up between the pews. “Ben, cover me!” Beverly yells.

“On it!” Ben shouts in response. He has a heavy Bible in his hands and bashes away the birds that are aiming at Beverly’s back, while Beverly goes sprinting across the floor towards Stan.

And then she’s there in front of him, but Stan still can’t look at her, can’t uncurl his limbs. “Come on, Stan,” Beverly says, holding her hand out to him. “Take my hand. Just take my hand—“

In the center of the floor, IT laughs, a wet, horrible sound. “Poor Stanley,” IT says. “Always the weakest link. Stanley, the first to be born...the first to die.”

“Shut up. Shut up, shut _up,”_ Ben shouts at IT, but IT just laughs and laughs as it dissolves in a whirlwind of crows. The birds soar towards the ceiling and disappear into the rafters, and then they’re gone, and the synagogue is silent.

Stan only realizes now that he’s sobbing. His chest heaving and his body wracked with sobs, even as Ben joins Beverly in helping Stan to his feet. “It’s okay, buddy,” Ben says comfortingly, brushing feathers off Stan’s shoulders. “You’re okay now.”

“What happened, Stan?” Bill demands. He throws a gore-covered book to the floor and strides over to them. “We s-said not to break the circle. Then we were telling you to m-move, and IT c-could have gotten Mike, IT could have g-gotten any of us, and you—“

“I’m sorry,” Stan gasps, hot tears spilling down his cheeks. Beverly’s grip tightens around his shoulders. “I was just scared, I—I couldn’t—“

“We’re all scared,” Bill interrupts angrily. “But when it’s l-life and death, you just have to s-suck it up and do what you’re—“

“Lay _off him,”_ Eddie snaps. “Can’t you see what IT did to him? He’s fucking terrified, Bill, and I don’t blame him.”

The anger in Bill’s expression fades. “You’re right,” he mutters, closing his eyes and rubbing his eyelids. “I’m sorry.” But he turns away, and doesn’t look at Stan again.

Stan sucks in a long breath and lets it out, still trembling. “Did it have to be birds?” he mumbles, mopping his eyes with the edge of his sleeve. “Here?”

“That’s what IT does,” Ben says, his voice rough. “IT—IT takes the things you love and turns them ugly.”

Stan thinks he might throw up. Richie does throw up then, behind one of the pews. “Okay,” Mike says decisively, looking around at all of them. “Okay. I think that’s enough for one day.”

“Speak for yourself. I’m having tons of fun,” Richie says. He straightens up and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m in the _danger zone_ of fun, baby.”

As they push their bikes wearily home, the setting sun bleeding orange through the clouds, Stan feels his hand ache again, and curls his fingers over his scarred palm. _They won’t say it, but they despise how afraid you are,_ the voice in his head whispers. _How cowardly. How weak._

The first to die.

And the thing is, Stan knows it isn’t even Pennywise’s voice in his head. It’s never been Pennywise—just that quiet, flat voice that Stan has always known only belongs to himself.

\--

“We need alcohol,” is the first thing Bill mutters as soon as they get back to the farmhouse. He makes a beeline for the wine cabinet and pours them all drinks, while Mike and Eddie see to disinfecting and bandaging everyone’s cuts.

They have dinner around the coffee table in the living room in silence—Bill in a chair, Stan and Eddie on the sofa, the rest sitting on cushions on the floor. As they eat, Bill looks around the farmhouse, at things he didn’t have time to notice before. He vaguely remembers what this place used to look like, back when they were kids—mostly dark and bare and a little dusty—but now, Mike’s worked to make it homey and welcoming, with warm lighting, and old rugs and mismatched throw pillows and checkered curtains. Apparently, Mike loves cheesy knick-knacks from the thrift store, too. Lamps with chips of colored glass on the lampshades; piggybanks shaped like dogs and frogs and boots, and what look like other people’s cross-stitch projects framed and hung on the wall.

Bill doesn’t recall that they ever came over to Mike’s house more than a handful of times, but he knows Mike and his grandfather cooked dinner for them—green beans and sweet potatoes and cornbread in a skillet, and the best chicken any of them had ever had. His eyes fall on one photograph on the mantelpiece,

“Th-The photos on the walls,” Bill says, indicating some of the other frames. “You buy them, or d-did they come with the frames?”

“Very funny.” Mike shakes his head. “I took them.”

“You did?” Ben swivels his head around to look at the one hanging above the mantelpiece. “Gosh, Mike, these are...” He seems like he’s about to say _beautiful,_ and then hesitates, like he’s torn about wanting to call anything in Derry beautiful.

"They’re good," he says finally. "You should keep doing it. Taking pictures."

Eddie suppresses a shudder. “I wonder why...IT hasn’t tried to get us here,” he says.

“Maybe because we’re far enough out from the center of town.” Mike pats the floor next to him. “Something in the bedrock of this farm from when this was all still mountains, millions of years ago. At least that’s what my grandfather used to say. He always told me this was a safe place, so—I never gave it up.”

“Safe place,” Ben murmurs, his forehead wrinkling. “Yeah.”

Stan looks at Mike. “Your grandfather used to say there was...something rotten in Derry,” he says. “Why didn’t you ever leave? I mean, after your grandfather died, there was nothing keeping you here.”

Mike looks slightly taken aback by the question, but he replies, “I couldn’t just—leave.”

“But you don’t owe this town anything,” Stan says, his voice wavering, but he never takes his eyes off Mike. “I mean, this town is full of the worst kinds of people. We saw it, growing up here. Remember Bowers? Remember how he and his cronies nearly killed us, multiple times? All your life, no one in Derry ever—“

“I don’t owe them anything? You think I care about _owed?”_ Mike stares. “After my grandfather died, I was the only person left who knew what was sleeping underneath this town. The only person. No matter what anyone around here thinks about me—you think I could just leave them alone, unprotected, to be preyed on?”

“I think if it had been any of them in your place, they wouldn’t have thought twice about saving their own skins,” Stan replies, a little more evenly now. 

“Those kids we saw today? You’d rather they die?” Mike is breathing harder now. “Do you know what kind of evil happens simply because people do nothing? I know you do, Stan.”

Stan doesn’t say anything then, just looks down with his lips pressed together.

“Guys, is what we’re doing even helping?” Richie asks, rubbing the back of his neck. “All the field trip stuff? It feels like we’re just...giving IT more opportunities to fuck with us.”

“I can feel it,” Eddie says, hollowly. “It, it’s horrible, but I can feel it.”

“Me too,” Beverly says, and looks away.

Bill looks thoughtful. “It’s, it’s like, you know when you have a mess of tangled thread? And then you find the right one to pull, and when you pull it, the knots start to unravel and resolve themselves, and you’re left with a straight line again. That’s what we’re doing, we’re...we’re pulling on the thread.” He pauses. “Th-There are doors we have to open...before we go back to the house on Neibolt.”

“Maybe it’s also because we need to remember the good things,” Ben says. “Amidst all the bad, this is unearthing a lot of good memories too, right? Maybe those are what we need to defeat IT. To not be afraid.”

“Maybe,” Stan says, and he looks so tired.

“W-We’re all tired,” Bill says with finality. “We should g-get some rest.”


End file.
